Texas Redistricting Impacts National Redistricting Efforts

After Texas’ decision to execute a mid-decade partisan redistricting effort in 2025, many other states are pursuing a similar path in a desperate race to secure congressional seats ahead of the 2026 midterm elections and beyond.

With six states having enacted new congressional maps in 2025, Republicans are estimated to be on track to pick up two to three current Democrat seats nationally.

Meanwhile, the seemingly incoherent legal precedents at play in redistricting litigation are being challenged in the U.S. Supreme Court, with the potential of improving the likelihood of success for Republican redistricting efforts.

Texas Redistricting

Texas Republicans had been considering a mid-decade redistricting since at least December 2024, as Texas Scorecard reported at the time.

This was in response to the ruling in Petteway v. Galveston County, which found that coalition districts—districts in which multiple minority groups make up the majority of voters—are not protected by law. This meant Republicans were no longer prohibited from redrawing those districts with purely partisan intentions.

In July 2025, Harmeet Dhillon—assistant attorney general for the Civil Rights Division in the U.S. Department of Justice—sent a letter to Gov. Greg Abbott, asking the state to redraw its congressional maps to secure more Republican seats.

In the letter, Dhillon interpreted the Petteway decision to mean that coalition districts are unconstitutional and must be redrawn, rather than simply that they are no longer protected. She highlighted four coalition districts and threatened DOJ legal action if Texas did not comply.

Abbott called the state legislature back into multiple special sessions over the summer to pass the new congressional map. The memo that finally caused the legislature to take up redistricting made no reference to Dhillon’s letter.

Texas passed its new congressional map in August, designed to flip five seats from Democrat to Republican—improving GOP power in what is a razor-thin majority in Congress.

Litigation

Meanwhile, Texas’ 2021 map was still being litigated for alleged racial gerrymandering and racial vote dilution before a three-judge panel in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas in El Paso.

Plaintiffs in the case—led by notorious Democrat redistricting attorney Chad Dunn—consolidated the case with a new lawsuit against Texas’ 2025 redistricting map. They again claimed that the new map constituted both racial gerrymandering and racial vote dilution.

The case was overseen by Judge David Guaderrama (appointed by President Barack Obama), Judge Jerry Smith (appointed by President Ronald Reagan), and Judge Jeffrey Brown (appointed by President Donald Trump). Judge Brown had ruled against Republicans in the Petteway case.

In seeking a preliminary injunction to block the map ahead of the 2026 primaries, the claim of racial vote dilution was dropped. This meant that Plaintiffs needed to prove the mapdrawer had racial intent when drawing congressional lines.

Adam Kincaid, president of the National Republican Redistricting Trust, testified in court that he was the one who drew the maps and repeatedly denied using any race data. He also disavowed the practice as immoral, in what Judge Jerry Smith described as an “impressive testimony.”

Plaintiffs failed to present any evidence refuting Kincaid’s testimony—even failing to present an alternative map that achieved all of the partisan requirements that Kincaid had placed upon him by the RNC and others.

A pivotal moment came when the State introduced a bombshell video of U.S. Rep. Al Green (D–Houston), who candidly stated, “If we don’t say this is racial, we won’t get to Section 2 and we won’t win,” referring to the Voting Rights Act strategy at the heart of the Democrats’ court challenge.

This acknowledged strategy underscored that the courtroom drama was as much about partisan advantage as the content of the maps themselves. This is further highlighted by the fact that Plaintiffs were hoping to return to the 2021 map—a map they had also accused of being racially gerrymandered, but that produced a better partisan outcome for Democrats.

Despite all of this, Judge Jeffrey Brown wrote a 2-1 decision that blocked the map from taking effect. The decision was immediately appealed directly to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Smith later released his dissent, slamming Brown for judicial misconduct. He claims that Brown cut him out of the process and intentionally misrepresented or ignored the facts of the case to come to the conclusion he wanted, as a judicial activist.

On appeal, the Supreme Court granted the State’s request for an emergency stay of Judge Brown’s order, meaning the 2025 maps are to be used for the 2026 midterm elections.

The case is expected to continue on the merits in 2027, with the court considering whether the 2025 map constitutes racial gerrymandering or racial vote dilution.

Evolving Precedents

Redistricting litigation is inherently complex, given the seemingly contradictory standards for racial gerrymandering and racial vote dilution.

To avoid racial gerrymandering, a mapdrawer must not consider race data whatsoever when drawing congressional lines. It has been established that purely partisan redistricting efforts will hold up in court.

Racial vote dilution, however, is much more complex. The current precedential understanding of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act (VRA) is that certain congressional districts are protected from being redrawn based solely on racial composition.

If the majority of a district’s citizen voting-age population (CVAP) is a single racial minority group, state legislators are restricted from modifying it—even when the change is an unintentional byproduct of drawing a map “blind to race,” as required under the Constitution.

In practice, this means that a mapdrawer must draw a map without considering race data. Lawyers then review the map to ensure that protected minority districts are maintained.

However, a case out of Louisiana is currently before the Supreme Court that experts predict will remove the current understanding of the VRA, no longer requiring congressional maps to protect districts based on racial composition. This is expected to aid Republican redistricting efforts during litigation, as the party has less of a minority base.

California Redistricting Lawsuit

California Gov. Gavin Newsom decided to respond to Texas’ redistricting by pursuing a partisan redistricting of his own that would pick up five Democrat seats—effectively canceling Texas’ efforts.

This was achieved through the passage of Proposition 50, which temporarily shifted control of California’s congressional map from the independent California Citizens Redistricting Commission back to the legislature so Democrats could use a new map for the 2026 through 2030 elections.

Harmeet Dhillon’s law firm then filed a lawsuit against California, accusing the state of having considered race when drawing congressional maps. To many, this sounded similar to the charges being leveled against Texas’ congressional map—but there is an important distinction.

While Texas had a mapdrawer who repeatedly disavowed any use of race data, California’s mapdrawer explicitly admitted to drawing districts based on race.

According to the lawsuit, California map drawer Paul Mitchell, in a presentation regarding the map, stated that the “number one thing that [he] first started thinking about” was “drawing a replacement Latino majority/minority district in the middle of Los Angeles.”

Mitchell also claimed that he changed another district to create a “Latino-influenced district at 35 percent Latino by voting age population.” The lawsuit presented evidence of many similar statements.

Dhillon contends this is clear evidence of racial gerrymandering and is requesting a preliminary or permanent injunction blocking the map from taking effect before the 2026 elections and beyond, instead reverting to the state’s 2021 map.

The case is still pending before a federal three-judge panel in Los Angeles. Regardless of the panel’s ruling, the decision is expected to be appealed to the Supreme Court.

Other National Redistricting Efforts

The Trump administration has been hard at work convincing Republican states to redistrict to secure additional congressional seats ahead of the upcoming elections. Meanwhile, Democrat states continue to consider ways to respond with their own redistricting efforts.

As it stands, six states enacted new congressional maps in 2025. These include California, Missouri, North Carolina, Ohio, Texas, and Utah. Republicans are expected to have picked up eight or nine seats, while Democrats only picked up six.

Missouri and North Carolina both successfully enacted maps with the intention of picking up an additional Republican seat. Ohio’s new map is also expected to pick up one or two Republican seats. This is in addition to the five picked up by Texas.

In addition to California’s five seats, only Utah picked up an additional Democrat seat in 2025. This came as the result of a court-ordered map.

In December, Indiana’s Republican-led Senate failed to pass a congressional map that could have picked up two more Republican seats. After the map passed the House, a bipartisan coalition of senators rejected the map, reportedly due to external pressure from the Trump administration.

Heading into 2026, the redistricting fight is only beginning.

Republican states that could redistrict in 2026 include Florida, Kansas, New Hampshire, and Nebraska.

Florida could pick up three to five Republican seats, while Kansas has only one Democrat-held district to target. New Hampshire could also pick up a Republican seat, though the effort seems to be stalled. Nebraska is only looking to strengthen districts that already favor Republicans.

Democrat states considering redistricting include Virginia, Illinois, and Maryland.

Virginia could pick up as many as four Democrat seats while Illinois could pick up two. Maryland has only one Republican-held seat to target.

While it is unlikely that all of these possibilities will occur due to various hurdles—particularly before the 2026 midterms—it is generally understood that Republicans would be favored in the mid-decade redistricting arms race.

Texas Scorecard will continue to cover redistricting updates into the new year.

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